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|
 State
of the Tank: (cont.) |
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| though, how do you tell
someone you’ve decided to pass
on a really rare frag that you asked
for and they’ve agreed to give
you? |
| Well,
fortunately I didn’t have to
wallow in that dilemma very long because
less than two weeks later, Jason called
me from the store and said he just
got in a wild colony that he believes
is the very same species. So if I wanted
some of it, come down now as he was
going to frag it into 5 or 6 pieces,
first come first served. |
I
got the pick of the litter .
But this was yet another coral whose introduction to the tank was a comedy of errors. You see, since the frag came from a newly imported wild colony, I tried to do the right thing and acclimate it to the lighting slowly. So I began by putting it on the bottom where it was soon bumped and bulldozed into some zoanthids by my snails. Next, I tried moving it up the rockwork a little but finding a decent piece of real estate was very difficult, even temporarily. Every place I put it, the snails seemed to revel in knocking it over. I’m sure they would’ve knocked it off completely and into a ‘bottomless’ crevice, if I’d let them. So by the fourth hour (and about half a dozen ‘rescues’), my impatience got the better of me and Ijust tacked it down
way up high in the tank where
it was originally designed to go anyway. So far, so good, and quite |
|
naturally, the snails haven’t come near it since.
Not
long after that, I came across
another interesting frag that someone
posted on Reef Central (“Man,
I just GOTTA start getting out
more.”) only this time he
mentioned the online vendor he
got it from: Atlantis Aquarium
(www.atlantisaquarium.net). So,
having never heard of them but
loving the piece, I was really
eager to check out place.
Wow
Now
yes, it’s a bit pricey and
the more exotic frags are kind
of small (they tell you the approximate
size on
the page and a half-inch means a half
inch) but they have some wickedly unusual
stuff! And as packed as my tank is
becoming, I’m really appreciating
small stuff these days. It seemed like
a good
match. I ordered a piece of the piece
I’d seen posted: An ‘ Ocean
Blue Polyp Stylophora’ and
just because I’d never seen
this species, a frag of their Cyphastrea
ocellina
“ Stylophora pistillata: Acquired as a 1/2” frag from Atlantis Aquarium after coming across a specimen posted on Reef Central. Billed as an ‘Ocean Blue Polyped Stylo, it will supposedly take on an unusual blue/gray hue. Right now I have it mounted in thelower top third of the tank under good light and moderate
(due to a large piece of live rock
directly behind it) water flow.” |
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